My birthday is at the end of the month, so it would be an AWESOME birthday present if my book got some love (and votes)! I entered my book in AllAuthor's book cover contest for the month of September, and in order to advance to the next round, I have to get enough votes to be in the top 100. So if you like my book cover, please feel free to vote for it HERE.

And as a "thank you" for voting, if you'd like a free copy of my book, it's part of an Instafreebie giveaway for the first two weeks of September (along with many other fantastic YA books - all FREE).  You can pick up your copy HERE.

Thank you so much!  Fingers crossed!

And parents breathe a sigh of relief...

Just kidding.  I hope everyone out there had a great first day of school!  Hard to get used to the early mornings again (especially for the parents!).  More coffee, please.  :)

Hope you're having a great July so far!  For anyone who's talked to me in the past couple months, I've probably sounded like a broken record, ha.  All I've had on my mind is the upcoming book launch by the Fairfield Scribes of our three new novels.

THE ROSE QUEEN (by me) is a YA retelling of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, with the Beast as a woman. MIGON (by P.C. Keeler) is a YA science fiction/fantasy crossover set in the far future about a boy who becomes a miniature dragon. THE WITCHES' BANE (by Edward Ahern) follows the adventures of a mystical detective intent on tracking down the supernatural killers of his ex-girlfriend.

We are holding two really fun, free events to celebrate the books being released.  First of all, for those who AREN'T in the Fairfield area, we'll be doing an online book launch party on Facebook on July 21st from 8-10pm EST.  You can find out more info HERE.  All three of us will be online chatting about our new books.  We'll have trivia questions for readers to win these three new releases, in addition to other books. We'll also have a Q&A session, where we'll be happy to answer questions about writing, publishing, dragons, pagan rituals, fairy tales, and pretty much anything else you'd like to ask.

Next, if you're local to Connecticut, we're having an in-person book launch at the Fairfield University Bookstore on July 28th from 1-3pm.  More info about it HERE.  We'll each do a reading from our books, and  chat about books and writing in general. Great food and drinks (non-alcoholic) will be served, and the first 20 readers to buy a book will get a free Fairfield Scribes tote bag.  Plus we'll be raffling off a copy of each of the books.

Hope to see you soon at one of these events!

​The literary and humor writer Paul Beckman runs a monthly reading series the first Friday of every month in the Red Room (3rd floor) at KGB Bar in New York City.  On July 6th, I'll take part in "F Bomb NY: Flash Fiction Reading Series" in the Red Room.  I will join five very accomplished writers: Rachel Veroff, Dawn Raffel, MC Neruda, Austin Alexis and Michael Mungiello.  There will also be an open mic time, so if you're looking to take the stage, this is your chance!

​Stop by to hear some amazing flash fiction and have a drink or two.  KGB Bar is located at 85 E 4th Street, and the event will take place from 7-9pm.  Hope to see you there!

If you're looking for something to do this weekend that combines a beautiful location, beautiful weather, beautiful art and beautiful words, look no farther than the The Poets, Writers & Storytellers Stage at the Norwalk Art Festival, located at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Mathews Park, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk, Connecticut 06850.  This is the second year that the talented (and very organized) poet Jerry T. Johnson has put together this event, and it promises to be a wonderful weekend.  For those poets and writers out there who would like to take the stage, there will also be an open mic time.

So stop in, enjoy art and the spoken word, and stay afterwards to say hi to all the writers!  Below is the schedule of the very local authors who will be participating (including me - I'll be reading on Saturday).  Hope to see you there!

It's here!  It's here!

The release of Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief is tomorrow.  ​Radix Media is hosting a book release party with contributors Joaquin Fernandez, Stacya Shepard Silverman, María José Giménez and myself at the Greenlight Bookstore at 686 Fulton Street in Brooklyn at 7:30pm.

​Hope to see you there!

I first met Paul Beckman in 2017 through Doug Mathewson, editor of the pocket-sized journal Blink-Ink.  Paul had arranged a reading of local flash fiction writers at Best Video in Hamden, Connecticut, and invited Doug and me to be a part of the reading.  I was completely thrilled to join in - it was my first, official time reading any of my fiction in public, and it was with a wide variety of amazing and talented writers.  Flash fiction might possibly be my favorite form to write, and it's certainly one of my favorites to read.  It was fantastic to meet such a master of the short form as Paul.

Afterwards, Paul was generous enough to agree to have a chat with me about his writing and inspirations, his latest book to be released, and a host of other happenings he's involved with.  To let you know a little bit about Paul from his official bio:

Paul Beckman is the author  of the collections - “Peek” & “Come! Meet My Family and other stories", a novella, “Lovers and Other Mean People”, and a flash chap book, “Maybe I Ought to go Sit Quietly in a Dark Room for a While”. His story, “Healing Time” was one of the winners in the 2016 Best of the Small Fictions. Over 400 of Paul’s stories are widely published in print, via audio, and online in the following magazines among others: Connecticut Review, Literary Orphans, Blue Fifth,  Litro, Playboy, Jellyfish Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Red Fez, Necessary Fiction, Fictive Dream, Molotov Cocktail, and Thrice Fiction, Spelk Fiction among others. His blog is www.pincusb.com. Paul hosts the FBomb NY flash fiction reading series monthly at KGB’s Red Room in New York and had a story picked for the 2018 Norton Anthology of Micro Fiction. He has a new collection of Flash and Micro Fiction, KISS KISS due out in late March.

​​​Paul, thank you so much for doing the interview with me!  I really enjoy humor and flash fiction, and I generally prefer the two of them together.  You write really memorable short stories that span the literary genre, from the aforementioned humor - to slice of life - to surreal.  What drew you to the short form of fiction?
 
Hi Alison. Big thanks for doing this interview.
 
I morphed unknowing ling into the short form we call Flash Fiction. I was writing Flash before I knew it had a name. My short stories were most often in the 1500 -2000 words and I did write a few up to 4000, but my sweet spot was the 1500 - 2000 range. I had a New York agent for a while and she placed a 1200 word story, "Two Ships" with Playboy.

I do remember the first flash I read. It was by Leonard Michaels and was called "Something Evil".  Years later I was reading one of his collections and "Something Evil" was just a part of a longer story, but it held up well on its own.
 
The collection, Sudden Fiction, came out in 1983 edited by Robert Shepard and James Thomas and it was a shout out to me, as were the quarterly collections of The Quarterly edited by Gordon Lish. Not all of Lish's stories were Flash but all were short and many were what we would call Flash today.
 
In 1995 my first story collection came out, "Come! Meet My Family and other stories" and looking over it a couple of years ago I realized I had quite a number of Flashes in it.

I've enjoyed reading two of your recent short story collections, Peek (2015) and Kiss Kiss (2018) (reviews of these two works are to come out/have come out in Bewildering Stories.)  There are some reoccurring dark themes in your stories, including living in the projects, alcoholism, poverty, physical and mental abuse, hunger, sexual problems, infidelity, marital and relationship difficulties, dysfunctional families and neglected children.  Very serious problems are at the heart of almost every story, and you're skillfully able to turn these situations on their head and open the eyes of the reader to the absurdity in each one.   What about the pathos of these situations screams "humor" to you?
 
This is one intense question, Alison. Looking back at my younger years I used humor to offset the pains of poverty, of being bullied, of being debased, and punished both physically and mentally. Jealousy of students in high school who had  cars, money, and lived in houses with lawns not pavement. This was a constant in my life so I hung out with the kids who took what they wanted, talked back, snooped, ranked, fought, stole, and worked. I always worked and was always angry that I had to give the bulk of my pay to my mother. No doubt she needed it but I saw it as injustice and grew up fighting perceived injustices.
 
I see my writing as my therapy, as my chance to play God, my chance to become, to experience, to have, to play pranks, and to be. My shots at getting back at authority figures: teachers, relatives, rabbis, sergeants, bosses, police, zoning officers and, and, and. And in all of this writing I see the absurd--always the absurd and the humor in situations that most of my characters, friends, and relatives would not find humorous even though they often find my writing humorous and off the wall.
 
I don't write memoir. I write fiction which very often is precipitated by a real life occurrence--sometimes mine and oftentimes behaviors observed and expanded. And, I still have a hard time with injustice.

Thank you for your honest answer, Paul.  A quote that has always inspired me is by Octavia Butler: "Every story I create, creates me.  I write to create myself."  And as writers, I feel that we take a part of ourselves, be it large or small, and find a way to expand it so that others can see what we see and hopefully take something important from it.  That brings me to my next question - do you write stories as they come to you, or do you pen your work with an intended audience?  If conscious of your audience, what do you hope readers will take away from your work?
 
For the most part I write stories that come to me and I would give the same answer if I were writing to most prompts. I do not know the ending of a story until I get to it--the same with the second paragraph. Alice Mattison, a long time mentor, friend and terrific writer used to talk about her characters giving her direction and I thought that it would never happen to me. Now, all these years later, it happens frequently.
 
The occasional prompt that I write to that's so specific that I find myself writing to an audience I would like my readers to finish the story and believe in it.
 
You seem to tackle a lot of subjects that are perhaps completely UN-prompted - subjects that other writers might find taboo.  For example, in your latest collection, you have stories containing ideas such as a penis that falls off but is still useful to its owner, peeping toms, facial ass hair, grandma's sexual escapades, a woman with an arachnid fetish, incest, role reversals, a deadly ball of dental floss, and urine as a medical cure.  Are there any lines that you feel shouldn't be crossed in literature, or is everything fair game?
 
When you write that list it doesn't seem as if I have any taboos so I guess I don't if the subject matter is handled right and I think I do. I know that a great many magazines list topics they're not interested in publishing and that's fine but I manage to temper sensitive subjects with the bizarre or humorous and that comes natural to me.
 
It certainly does come naturally!  You can make the bizarre seem normal and the ordinary seem strange, many times using twenty words to tell a story that takes other authors a whole novel to reveal.  You're a master at the short form.  I'm curious, though - do you think you'd ever write a longer work?  For example, Mirsky and Elaine are reoccurring characters who appear in a number of stories.  Would you ever write a book about them?
 
I wrote my first Mirsky story over thirty years ago with no intention of making him (he was a 12 year old boy) a recurring character. I think it was the only time I used his first name, but he didn't have a last name. When I decided to write another story I also decided I only wanted to use his last name and I only wanted two syllables so I drove to a Jewish cemetery in Bridgeport and walked around until I found a name I liked and it was Mirsky.  Others have asked the same question about a longer piece with Mirsky and Elaine but unlike a short story I'd have to be struck with a concept first.
 
This is great. I think I'll make it my epitaph. You can make the bizarre seem normal and the ordinary seem strange. And of course I'd credit you on the stone.
 
Ha ha, I've never gotten stone cold credit before.  Or would it be cold stone credit?  Speaking of crediting, you mentioned the first flash you read was by Leonard Michaels.  What other authors/creatives would you say have been influences on your writing?
 
Lydia Davis, Isaac Babel, Frederick Barthelme, Sholem Aleichem, Joy Williams, Etgar Keret, Mark Helprin, Diane Williams, Pamela Painter, Robert Scotellaro, Kathy Fish, Len Kuntz, Nancy Stohlman, Steve Almond, Tillie Olsen, Melissa Goodrich, and so many more.
 
What are you writing right now?  Any new collections/stories in the works?
 
I'm compiling a chapbook of hardboiled/noir Flash stories for a chap book. I've got about two dozen so far and at least half have been published.

I've also been asked by a publisher to add stories from "the projects" to make a collection.

Additionally, I continue to write Flash and submit stories on a regular basis.

​Now the final questions - where can readers find out more about you and your writing?  Will you be doing any readings or appearances soon?
 
I'm working on that with a publicist now but my Launch reading will be at R.J. Julia Bookstore in Madison  CT April 11th at 7pm.
 
I will also be reading at KGB and the Cornelia Café--dates to be announced.
 
And I'll be reading in Denver in Aug at their FBomb series.
 
More to come.

Radix Media is soon to release their inaugural anthology, entitled Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief.  ​Among the 33 contributors from around the world are the very talented writers Kristina V. Ramos, Andy Connor, Joy Kennedy-O'Neill, Joaquin Fernandez, Stacya Shepard Silverman and María José Giménez.  You can find interviews with these writers and excerpts from the anthology on Radix Media's blog here.

I am thrilled to say a poem of mine will also be included in the anthology, and a short interview about my poem was released on Radix Media's blog today.  You can read my interview here.

If you'd like to hear the poem in person and say hi to several of the local contributors, including Joaquin Fernandez, Stacya Shepard Silverman, María José Giménez and myself, stop by the book release party at the Greenlight Bookstore at 686 Fulton Street in Brooklyn on April 26th at 7:30pm.

​Hope to see you there!